my favorite Two-Face story ever, plus a great interview with Greg Rucka

[thehefner]

In the first Two-Face Tuesday post since Fresno three weeks ago, I've posted what I consider to be the definitive Harvey Dent story, my gold standard for everything related to this character up at about_facesI strongly resisted the urge to just post the whole damn thing here too. Besides being my favorite Two-Face comic, it's just plain one of my favorite

Comments

[box_in_the_box]

I have never seen more of an overpowering male audience drive to "put the bitch in her place" than I have with fan art and fanfic of Wonder Woman. She is ALWAYS being raped into docile submission.

[pokeyburro]

I'm pretty sure it's lust, more than fear. The "put in her place" schtick is in making up the stuck-up part, so that there's less guilt afterward. Look at it this way: there's pinup art of her as well. Do you think it sells to the same audience?

[box_in_the_box]

Look at it this way: there's pinup art of her as well. Do you think it sells to the same audience?

While I'm sure there's some degree of Venn Diagram overlap, to a large extent, no, I don't think they do sell to the same audience, because I'm all about the superhero porn, even to the extent of consensual BDSM, but so much of the stuff featuring Wonder Woman makes me feel like I've waded into crime scene evidence rather than erotica. Even if we assume that Wonder Woman is a virgin (and isn't THAT a creepy assumption that everyone makes), I see no reason why we can't have fun showing her in an enjoyably nasty romp of sweaty, super-powered grinding, WITHOUT Mongul or Ares or Cyborg-Hitler deflowering her against her will.

[pokeyburro]

You might be right. I suspect there's more overlap than you claim, but it's not really my crowd. (I can't even imagine the union of both sets being more than a million to begin with. Seems like such a niche market. It's hard to measure, since American audiences are so schizophrenic about porn.)

Here's the thing. To write WW, or any established comic book character - hell, I guess this goes for any fanfic in general - as sexual, is usually to write against how the character is portrayed. (If it isn't - e.g., Druuna - then it doesn't really count for my purposes here.) If it's against portrayal, then it's already feeling to the fanfic/fanart creator like they're raping the portrayal anyway, so it's hard to get away from the guilt. So they make up this bit about "putting her in her place". Not all fan creators cope with it this way; that's where the consensual stuff comes from.

I'm just armchair theorizing, though.

[pokeyburro]

I'll have to check out the Dent story as soon as I have time.

I suspect Rucka's exaggerating his point about low comic readership. I'm with him as far as widening the distribution network, if the price is right, but not with comparing comics to a TV show. I'm betting it costs much, much less to distribute a comic book than a TV show. If that comic sells $300,000 worth, but cost only $200,000 to distribute, what's the big deal?

And what single manga sold millions of copies in the year it was released?

Finally, TV requires more viewers because it's not selling DVDs; it's selling ads. How many ads do you want in your comic book? (It might get a lot more readers, and even be higher quality to boot; be careful before you say "zero".)

[thehefner]

I'm trying and failing to find sales figures for INUYASHA manga, but that right there is a good bet for something that sells crazy huge DC-dwarfing numbers.

And if I had to guess, I'd speculate that comics are pretty much surviving on ads at this point. Much like THE NEW YORKER seems to. I'm not sure at this rate how they could be any more ad-driven than they already are (but I'm sure some enterprising somebody has ideas, especially now that WB has taken a more active hand in DC).

[sara_lakali]

I'd put comics back in the spinner racks and 7-Elevens and grocery stores and Walmart. That's what's killing us.

Yeah, this was one of the reasons I quit buying comics. I lived in a small town that had no comic shop and I had no car to drive the 30+ miles to the nearest one. At the same time, my address was changing about every six months to a year as I moved into and out of the dorms and various apartments (also, I couldn't keep my same campus PO Box over the summer) so a subscription was out of the question.

The only problem with putting comics in all those outlets is that they're going to have to scale way back on the on-panel violence. They're not going to be able to get those comics in WalMart or the grocery store with brains and guts flying and severed arms and on-panel rape. I just don't see DC going that route in the near future.

[aliasjack]

Got linked that interview yesterday, and the stuff he says about gender identity, aside from reminding me of similar things Sam Kieth's said, just really clicks with my own feelings. It's not trans, but not quite cis either. Hard to explain, really.

and while i get why you didn't like OMAC Project and a lot of that's still kinda hanging over the whole thing, i'd recommend Checkmate to anyone because it'd really very good

[thehefner]

It's not just the Max/Beetle thing that irks me about OMAC, it's how everything related to the JLI is messed up. Bad enough they brought back Dimitri expressly to pointlessly kill him off (why can't a nice guy like that just fade into obscurity with his happy family?!), but at least there was the consolation of a JLI reunion to get revenge on Max, which ended up having all the emotional impact of this:

[aliasjack]

If it were Ice, I could agree with you, but Bea was never quite as innocent. Apparently her origin was changed post-Crisis to being a spy with modeling as her cover. My regular sources are down, so I couldn't confirm or give you issue numbers right now.

and yeah, the Dimitri bit made me sad
he was one of my favorites

Now that you've read Blackest Night 8, how're you feeling about Generation Lost? I'm both intrigued and worried but I'll prolly give it a chance.

[thehefner]

Was her origin changed before OMAC-era stuff?

Thing is, Dimitri was listed as Rocket Red #7 in OMAC, which he wasn't. #7 was the original Rocket Red to join their team, the one who turned out to be a Manhunter robot. Just lends further evidence to my theory that Rucka and company just read the first trade paperback of JLI and no further, and just took the characterizations from there (right along with Max still being a bastard AND a human).

I have high hopes for GENERATION LOST, but I'm concerned for three reasons:

1.) Can Winick prove as capable a partner for Giffen as DeMatteis? I don't want an imitation, just something as complementary.

2.) I want Max redeemed, goddammit. I don't want him to be the main bad guy for the whole story! But nothing I've seen indicates that anyone has any interest in redeeming him (or using the backdoor option that Johns introduced in BOOSTER GOLD).

3.) I'm bothered by a distinct lack of Guy and/or Ted. Either or both add vital dynamics to that team.

For all that, I say again: high hopes!

[shadowlongknife]

Your Greg Ruckas, those are the guys who need to be editors-in-chief.

But he talks too much sense, because the bosses want cash NOW NOW NOW, and not to have to hear, "Okay, this is gonna be a rebuilding period, just like resurrecting a crappy baseball/football/hockey team, so just TRUST ME, okay?"

[aliasjack]

The problem is prolly he'd be in a total Oracle situation there if he couldn't write as well. Babs wouldn't hang back and coordinate instead of working in the field if she weren't stuck in the wheelchair, she wouldn't let herself. I can see Rucka feeling the same way about editing.

also yeah like they'd ever let him
except now in my dreams

[shadowlongknife]

As long as he had a different editor, I wouldn't have an issue with his acting as editor in chief while writing. Bob Harras did it on Avengers as Editor in Chief, and Tom Defalco did it on Thor.

Admittedly DeFalco's Thor was assy, but that's besides the point.